Crackdown

by Bernard Cornwell

  I assumed the Maggot was delivering or picking up a customer, but it was none of my business, so I stripped down to my shorts and began work as Thessy, his brother Philemon and their father took a battered wooden skiff across the lagoon. Two brown pelicans flapped past as I began shaping the broken ends of Masquerade’s shattered planking. The sun was warm on my back, but the south-easterly wind took the edge off the stifling heat. A gaggle of Bonefish’s children were in constant, but changing, attendance, sometimes helping me, but more often chasing each other in a complicated game of tag up and over Masquerade’s hull. Revelation came and sat in the shade of Masquerade’s bows where she plucked two chickens that I suspected had been killed in honour of my return to the island. The chickens’ surviving relatives clucked and scratched in the dirt, oblivious to the drifting feathers. Revelation and I chatted idly, content to let the minutes drift pass like warm thistledown. “Thessy says he’s been offered a lot of money for a charter?” Revelation eventually challenged me.

  “That’s true.”

  “But you von’t do it?”

  “I don’t want to leave you, Revelation.”

  She gave that piece of gallantry the scorn it deserved. “Father vouldn’t really vant him to go for all the summer.”

  “So it doesn’t matter if I say no,” I said with some relief, for I had been feeling somewhat guilty at risking Thessy’s chances of making some money.

  “But if you go on this charter, Father will let Thessy go.” Revelation went sweetly on, thus impaling me on the hook of my own guilt once more. It was I who had introduced Thessy to McIllvanney and who had secured him the job with Cutwater, but Bonefish had only allowed his son into the wide wicked world because of his trust in me. I was not certain that the trust was deserved, but Bonefish was convinced I was protecting his son from iniquity, and no assertion to the contrary would convince him otherwise. “And if Thessy vent,” Revelation continued, “then the money vould be good, because the outboard is broken and Father can’t mend it and there’s no money for another.” She sighed, then twisted on her stool to gaze in astonishment because a car was thumping and crashing its way along the dirt road that led from the island’s one village to Bonefish’s sprawl of shacks. It was clear from Revelation’s expression that cars were as uncommon at this end of the island as polar bears; indeed, the sight of one was so surprising that she picked up her skirts and, with the younger children around her, fled towards the safety of her mother’s kitchen.

  The car, an ancient Pontiac taxi that was painted six shades of yellow and purple, stopped outside the twin piles of broken coral that were Bonefish’s proud gateposts. There was a pause, then the back door of the cab opened, and a very tall white man climbed out into the sun. He was dressed in checked golfing trousers, cowboy boots and a cowboy hat. He blinked uncertainly at the landscape. He looked lost and nervous, as though he was unsure of where he was or why he had bothered to come.

  Then he saw me, waved, and began walking slowly towards me. I did not respond, for I was feeling nothing but astonishment. I could not even speak. I was struck dumb because George Crowninshield, senator and possibly a future President of the United States, had come alone to Straker’s Cay. “Hello, Nick.” He held out a hand and gave me a smile.

  “Oh, bloody hell,” I found my voice. Then shook his hand.

  One night during our charter, when we had been sipping whisky under the stars, Senator Crowninshield had told me that no fat man could ever again become President of the United States. “William Taft will be the last really fat President,” he had told me.

  “Was he very fat?”

  “Big as a house, Nick.” The senator had frowned, then opined that it was not just the fat who were for ever barred from the Oval Office, but even the ugly. America, Crowninshield had said with a note of amusement in his voice, was doomed for ever to have toothsome Presidents, and all because television now ruled politics. He had sounded amused, but then he had turned to me and pointed to his chin. “See the scar?”

  There had been the faintest mark against his tanned skin, so I had nodded.

  “I had a dimple there,” the Senator had confessed with his engaging frankness, “which my advisers determined made me look too baby-faced, and so we had it removed.” He had laughed, simultaneously mocking the stupidity of government by cosmetics and confessing that he was also a part of it, just as he was part of government by voice coach and acting coach.

  Not that the senator needed a beautician’s help if he was to become President, for George Crowninshield was a good-looking man with a strong-boned face and a head of thick black hair. He had to be fifty, but he did not look a day over thirty-five, an illusion helped by his lopsided boyish grin that was so very full of charm. It was the candid charm that was his greatest public asset. He was popularly supposed to be a man who not only told the truth, but who could not tell a lie, and the senator’s aides and publicists were not unhappy to promulgate that echo of a previous President’s virtues.

  Not everyone was so impressed by Senator Crowninshield. Ellen said he was a political lightweight whose stagecraft was better than his statecraft. The usual jibe was that Crowninshield was a politician without a cause, or rather that he would support any cause so long as it was fashionable, but his critics also attacked Crowninshield for being wealthy, claiming that his eminence was solely due to the vast amounts of money that he spent on his campaigns. One night, long after the senator had chartered Wavebreaker, I had defended him to Ellen, saying that it was not Crowninshield’s fault that he had been born to wealthy parents, and that he had used his wealth well. “He’s an honest man,” I had said trenchantly, “and there aren’t too many of those in politics.”

  Ellen had given me one of her pitying looks. “Honest? For God’s sake, Nick, he graduated from Yale Law School! He’s just pretending to be an aw-shucks-gee-look-what-happened-to-me-when-I-wasn’t-trying kind of guy. He’s nice to us because we don’t threaten him, and because he’s cultivated the vote-catching art of being modestly affable, but wearing cowboy boots and grinning like a demented Howdy-Doody doesn’t turn a rattlesnake into a puppy!”

  I had not believed her then, and I did not believe her now. I believed the senator was a thoughtful man whose wealth had elevated him above the need to make compromises with his convictions. He was also a man who seemed mighty pleased to see me again. He lightly punched my shoulder. “You look good, Nick, real good.”

  “So do you, senator.”

  “I ought to, Nick, considering how much I pay my fitness advisers and dietitians. You know what it costs to join a health club these days? Of course”—he offered me his ingenuous grin—”what really keeps me fit is all that prime USDA beef.” The senator represented a beef-rearing state and never forgot to extol the benefits of a plateful of bleeding home-grown American steak, while in private, as I had learned when he and his wife had chartered Wavebreaker, George Crowninshield rarely touched red meat.

  “How did you find me?” I asked him.

  “One of my staff spoke to that guy McIllvanney. I had to be in Nassau anyway, so I thought I’d look you up. I can’t stay long, but I had a particular reason to speak with you.” The yellow and purple taxi was waiting for him. The taxi driver was squatting by one of Bonefish’s gateposts where he surreptitiously smoked a cigarette. When the cigarette was finished the driver would be invited to wait in the shade of Bonefish’s casuarinas, but not before.

  “Did the Maggot fly you here?” I asked Crowninshield.

  The senator nodded and laughed. “I remember him, of course, from when he played for the Giants. My Lord! He flies a plane in the same way he used to sack quarterbacks!”

  The Maggot had played American football until he had come off his Harley-Davidson at eighty miles an hour and permanently damaged his left knee. Sometimes, when drunk, he would regale me with stories of his footballing prowess, but such stories went past me like galley smoke because I could not bring myself to enquire, nor indeed to care,
about the differences between a Tight End and a flea-flicker. When the Maggot became too boring about football I told him cricketing stories until he shut up. We liked each other, and I was glad that the senator also liked him.

  Now, fanning his face with his hat, Senator Crowninshield followed me into the shade of Masquerade’s hull and stared up at her scarred flank. “So this is your famous boat, eh?”

  “What’s left of her.”

  “She’s surely pretty, Nick.” He walked to the stern where her name was lettered in gold. “Sounds like a tribute to your father’s profession, Nick.”

  “She was called Masquerade when I bought her. It’s said to be unlucky to change a boat’s name.”

  He gave me a shrewd look, clearly suspecting that I would have changed the name had I dared defy the superstition. He said nothing about his suspicion, instead asking me to remind him of how Masquerade had become damaged.

  “Some swine stole her and ran her on to a coral reef,” I said, “and I’m spending the next two months mending her.”

  Crowninshield walked a few paces in silence until he was standing under the palms which edged the lagoon. “So you’re mending your boat instead of taking my twins sailing?”

  “You got it.” I mimicked his slow accent, and the mimicry made him turn and stare at me, and the look on his face instantly made me regret my mimicry. He was a man whose approachability made him seem so very affable, but no one, however wealthy, becomes a Presidential hopeful without some steel in the soul, and it was that sudden steel that I now saw in the senator’s eyes. I had offended him, and the look he gave me was positively frightening. I tried to back away from my levity. “Someone else will take your kids to sea, senator. There’s a fellow called Sammy Meredith who’s every bit as good a sailor as I am.”

  “But I want you.” He had evidently forgiven my mimicry. He now took a pair of sunglasses from his shirt pocket and pointed them at me. When I made no response he turned and gazed at the far line of coral reef that was marked by a fret of white breaking water. I could see Bonefish and his sons working the lateen-sail of their skiff way beyond the reef, perhaps looking for turtles which they could sell to the men who exported the rich flesh to the Japanese. The sun was flat and hard and brilliant on the nearer water, forcing Crowninshield to turn back to me. “I need your help, Nick, because my only son is dying and my only daughter is following his example, and I need a strong man who will save them.” He said the words in the same light tone of voice he had used when speaking of my boat, and somehow the discordant contrast between the tone and the message threw me. I was not certain I had heard aright, then knew I had, and I suddenly felt a very British rush of embarrassment because of the senator’s frankness.

  “Your son is dying?” I responded inadequately.

  “Rickie is a drug addict,” he explained gently.

  I said nothing for a few seconds. “Oh, shit,” I then said, because that was how I felt and because I suddenly knew that the next few minutes were going to be extraordinarily difficult.

  “Specifically Rickie is addicted to cocaine,” the senator continued, “but I can’t say he’s particular in his tastes. He uses crack and cocaine and amphetamines, then more crack and more cocaine and perhaps even a speedball to round things off. You know what a speedball is, Nick?”

  “No.”

  “It’s an injection of cocaine mixed with heroin. It’s real big boy stuff”—the senator’s voice was very bitter—”and all of that garbage is washed down with alcohol and pickled in nicotine. My son is a dying junkie, but he doesn’t want to die alone so he’s encouraging Robin-Anne to keep him company and now she’s become addicted to cocaine and it won’t be very long before she’s smoking crack and trying speedballs.” The senator spoke with a sudden and incredible venom, and I realised it was only that angry force that was keeping him from weeping for his two children. “It seems,” he went on in a calmer voice, “that Rickie and Robin-Anne are among the sizeable minority of the population that is peculiarly prone to severe addiction.”

  I wondered why McIllvanney had not told me that Rickie and Robin-Anne Crowninshield were drug addicts, then I realised that McIllvanney would not have told me anything that might have risked my acceptance of the charter, but now that I had learned that the twins had such a severe drug problem I was even less keen to take on the job. “I’m no expert on drugs, senator,” I said. “There must be hospitals they can go to?”

  He nodded. “Of course there are such hospitals, and the twins are under the supervision of a clinic right now, but I believe they need extraordinary help.” He paused, and gave me a flicker of his famous smile. “Help from an extraordinary person, Nick. You.”

  “I’m not extraordinary,” I said flatly.

  Crowninshield smiled. “You were a marine.”

  “They’ll take anyone who isn’t blind,” I said with dismissive untruth.

  “And you understand what makes a son rebel against a father,” Crowninshield went on. “I remember those nights we shared our thoughts on that subject, Nick, and I think my son kind of needs the understanding you can give him.”

  I shied away from the very American-sounding compliment. “Get him a good doctor.”

  “I want you.”

  “I’m not an expert!” I protested.

  “Yes you are,” Crowninshield insisted. “You’re an expert sailor, and that’s good because it means you can take the twins to sea and keep them there until they’re damn well cured. I don’t care what hell they go through. I don’t care if they have to be strapped to the mast. I don’t care if they’re hallucinating purple snakes and blue baboons, because the whole point of putting them on a boat is that they can’t get off and swim home, and they can’t get drugs on board, and they can’t bribe you to take them to land, and that means they’ll have no damned choice but to get cured.”

  I said nothing. I was thinking of all the work I needed to do on Masquerade; all the painstaking hours of sawing and planing and caulking and rigging.

  Crowninshield stared at me through his obscuring lenses. “Nick,” he said at last, “my son is going to die within a year if I don’t do something very drastic. He’s already lost the sight of his left eye because cocaine starved the retina of blood, and he’s damn lucky not to be totally blind, or even dead, because the next time it could constrict the arteries of his heart or block the blood from reaching his brain. Or next time it could be Robin-Anne. So I have to do something because I can’t just stand idle and let my kids die.”

  The pain in the senator’s voice was awful, but I still did not want to become involved. I began walking along the track leading behind the beach towards the village, which was marked by the red tin roof of a tiny church showing above the casuarinas and palm trees. The senator fell into step beside me while some of Bonefish’s smaller children followed at a safe distance. We stopped close to a small graveyard where a tribe of wild goats stared suspiciously at us from between the mounds of earth and bleak wooden crosses. The senator was looking at the sun-reflecting sea. “The truth is, Nick, I messed up my kids, and that hurts. It wasn’t lack of love. Hell, I had a bumper sticker saying ‘Have You Hugged Your Kids Today?’ and, sure, I hugged them every day I could, but nowadays I sometimes wonder just what in hell is going on inside their heads. Especially Rickie. It’s easier to extract sense out of a fruitfly than to get a civil word out of Rickie. They threw him out of college because of cocaine, and he was damn lucky that they didn’t call the police, but all he’d say to me was to stay cool! To stay cool, for Christ’s sake! Your only son is a college drop-out, and bleeding from the nose because his blood vessels are popping from all the cocaine in his system, and he tells you to keep your cool!”

  I didn’t know what to say, so said nothing. A tiny lizard watched me with unblinking eyes from a rock beside the lagoon, while above the trees the red tin church roof shimmered bright in the sultry heat.

  “Did you ever take drugs?” the senator asked me after a long si
lence.

  “No.” My father had often urged me to try some of his marijuana, but I had never accepted, just as I had refused even to look at the cocaine that he kept in his dressing room.

  “Lucky you,” the senator said ruefully. “You’re a happy man, aren’t you, Nick? That’s why I want you to take the twins to sea. I want some of your certainty and happiness to rub off on my kids.”

  I shrugged that embarrassing wish away. Ellen had once assured me that I was only happy because I did not think too deeply, and probably she was right, but it is still that shallow contentment which makes people bring me their troubles just as the senator was now bringing me his two children. “What I don’t understand,” I said harshly, and in an attempt to steer the conversation away from compliments, “is why you give the twins enough money to buy themselves drugs in the first place.” What I really could not understand was why the senator did not beat ten kinds of nonsense out of a son who told him to cool it, but telling middle-class Americans to thump their kids is like asking them to burn their flag, so I did not waste my time.

  “They’ve got their own money,” the senator answered, “left to them by their grandmother. The twins are only entitled to the income, while Barbara and I control the capital, but all that changes on their birthday next month.”

  “When they scoop the pool?”

  The senator nodded. He sensed my curiosity about how much the twins were worth, and for a few seconds reticence and candour fought across his face, but then he shrugged. “They’ll inherit about six million dollars each.”

  “Jesus wept!” I stared at him. “And you let them use the income off that? Even though you know they blow it away on drugs?”